


ruby drops upon emerald grass

by remi_wolf



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Battle of Enbarr (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Death bed confession, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Gen, Golden Deer Ferdinand von Aegir, Heartbreak, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Claude von Riegan, Mutual Pining, Unrequited Love, Whump, Whumptober 2020, meant as romantic though, this could be read platonically or romantically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26944945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: Battles and wars are so much more romantic in stories. In stories, no one has to deal with the aftermath and bodies and blood and watching as your loved ones die in your arms. Ferdinand, when he joined the Golden Deer House five years ago, never imagined that he'd be stuck here after a nearly-six-year war with Hubert dying in his arms, despite everything he was trying to do to keep him from dying. At least there's enough time for a few final words.Whumptober 2020 Day 10: They Look So Pretty When They Bleed. Prompt: Blood Loss.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir & Hubert von Vestra, Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13
Collections: Beguilements and Distractions, Remi's Whumptober Collection for 2020, Whumptober 2020





	ruby drops upon emerald grass

“Hubert! Hubert, where are you?” 

Ferdinand looked around the plaza, around the capital’s palace that he had known so well over the years and decades of his life, growing up as part of the nobility in Enbarr, even if his family’s holdings were technically east of here by almost a week’s travel by carriage. He knew this place better than he had any right to, and he knew that Hubert would never have abandoned it, not if it meant leaving Edelgard to her own death at the hands of the Alliance. His hands, he supposed. 

He was one of the invaders, strangely enough. 

Ferdinand stopped as he looked around the large entryway before continuing to run, screaming still as he tried to find Hubert and get him safe. He still had a handful of vulneraries at his side, tied to his belt and waiting to be used. He had already wasted a handful of them on Empire soldiers that he recognized, people he knew and any of the other soldiers that he could try to save as surreptitiously as possible. He knew Claude and the Professor would never approve of him using Alliance supplies like this, especially as they still refused to entirely trust him. His letters had been read, and then he wasn’t allowed to send letters, and while he believed in their cause, he didn’t appreciate such levels of distrust. 

“Hubert, you stupid idiot, where are you!” 

Ferdinand couldn’t help the slight sob of despair as he looked around before he heard a cough finally. The only sound of a living thing he heard since walking in, and he ran towards it. Hopefully it was Hubert. Hopefully he was safe and still alive, and he took a deep breath. It was fine. He would be fine. He had to be fine. He knew that they had ended on rocky terms, that they had never seen eye-to-eye while at school, but he didn’t know what to do if he lost Hubert.

Ferdinand finally turned into the gardens, and he stopped as he looked at the scene in front of him. Demonic beasts with false crest stones laid in massive, corpse-strewn piles, with a few pitch-black robes here and there as unfamiliar mages. He heard the cough again, and he blinked as he saw a black robe shift and move. 

“Hubert?”

“Ferdinand. Naturally.”

Ferdinand ran towards the voice, and he finally saw Hubert, pausing as he stared at him. He looked even worse than he ever remembered him being, skin pale and almost ashen, and he settled down next to his side as he pulled his head into his lap. 

“Hubert, you idiot. What have you gotten yourself into?” Ferdinand asked, pushing his dark hair out of his eyes, wondering why he looked so awful before he saw the wounds scattered across his chest, and he realized why the grass was so wet underneath his knees. Blood. Hubert’s blood. Too much of it, really, and still sluggishly past his skin and clothes and Ferdinand quickly moved to get pressure onto the wounds. 

“Claude. Did Claude—”

Ferdinand shook his head as “I don’t care about Claude. I’m concerned about you and this stupid, idiotic vendetta Edelgard was on.”

“Was?”

Ferdinand bit his lip, grateful for the way his hair stupidly fell out of its braid and into his face so that it could hide his face. “She’s...she’s gone, Hubert. The Professor dealt the final blow, and..." He didn’t know what else to say, and so he finally ended up just staying quiet. That was easier than trying to deal with speaking past the knot of emotion as he swiftly realized he was one of the last members of Adrestian nobility to be alive, other than Linhardt. Everyone else had died. Caspar died, and now Edelgard, and Hubert was in his arms, starting to die. He didn’t know what to do at all. 

“Well, then you need to make sure that Claude gets the letter I left him. I knew—I knew this would happen. This was going to happen when the Professor sided with Claude rather than her Majesty.”

Ferdinand sighed before finally reaching out to his belt, pulling off one of the vulneraries and biting at the wax plug that kept the potion safe inside until needed .  He tipped the clear liquid into Hubert’s mouth, knowing it wouldn’t do too much, but desperately hoping that it would be able to provide some sort of healing and health for him. At least close Hubert’s injuries enough for him to get to Marianne. Ferdinand ran out of spells hours ago, and he desperately hoped that Hubert could hold out long enough to get proper medical attention. 

“Please don’t leave me. Please. I don’t—”

“Ferdinand.”

Ferdinand frowned as he took a deep breath, looking at Hubert and carefully reaching up to brush his thumb against his cheek. He didn’t want to lose Hubert. Not after nearly six years of coming to terms with just how much Edelgard and Hubert meant to him, despite their arguments, and he still hated that it took him so long to realize that he was on the wrong side of this war. Maybe he could have helped to turn the tide against the Professor if he had been standing there with Edelgard and Hubert. 

“You have to be fine. I cannot lose you. Please don’t make me lose anyone else,” Ferdinand murmured. He looked down at the injuries, at the blood that was still sluggishly slipping from Hubert’s body, and he pulled another vulnerary off of his belt and poured it between Hubert’s lips. Most of the liquid trickled out of Hubert’s mouth, and Ferdinand couldn’t help the quiet sob as he shifted, pulling Hubert closer against his chest. Hubert only barely managed a quiet groan of pain as Ferdinand moved him, though he raised a gloved hand to trace Ferdinand’s jaw, holding his cheek in his hand. 

“I cannot begrudge you leaving, Ferdinand. Please realize that. Her Majesty and I...we never resented you. Missed you, perhaps—” Hubert’s words were cut off as he coughed, a spray of blood following his breath, and he turned to curl against Ferdinand’s chest again. “But we missed you. I missed you.”

“I never should have left. If I had not been so blinded by my needless ambition—”

“Your ambition is why people love you. The Empire will need you. Do not let the Alliance punish our people. You cannot let that happen, and I know you, and I know you won’t do that.” 

Ferdinand took a shaking breath, petting over Hubert’s hair and he couldn’t quite hold back the sob as he looked at him. His breathing was shallow, and he could see what little color remained in Hubert’s cheeks fade as they looked at each other, and as he moved his fingers to his pulse point, he could feel it fluttering like a hummingbird under his fingertips. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Ferdinand...you need to. Leave before you actually watch me die.” Hubert took a shaking breath, trying to breath deep enough as he pushed Ferdinand away, and Ferdinand refused to let him go, pulling him as close as he could. 

“I let you go once. Don’t make me let go of you again.”

Hubert managed a chuckle, one of the dark sounds that normally made everyone accuse him of darkly plotting something, but now...maybe it was still that. Maybe he was planning on just dying and leaving Ferdinand entirely alone to rebuild the Empire and the Kingdom and the Alliance. Alone. 

Well, not alone, because there was the entirety of the Alliance and, honestly, the majority of the Kingdom was still intact after the Empire’s attempt to annex it, so he was going to be forced to rebuild the Empire alone to ensure that it remained aligned with the Alliance, and he could feel everything starting to break down, and he wasn’t sure if he was sobbing or not until he saw tears dropping onto Hubert’s face. 

“Ferdinand. Listen to me.”

Ferdinand forced himself to look at Hubert, to quiet and still himself because Hubert was almost dead, and he could hear the rattle of his breathing growing wetter with blood.

“Survive. You are Ferdinand von Aegir. You’re clearly superior to all of us if you survived this long. So you need to survive.” Hubert took a shaking breath as he looked at Ferdinand, reaching up to brush his fingers against Ferdinand’s cheek. “You truly are like the sun. You...were always too bright to look at..."

Ferdinand huffed a laugh, shaking his head before he blinked, looking at Hubert’s glassy eyes and feeling his stomach sink. They were too glassy, too blank, but dull and not moving, even as Ferdinand started screaming and shaking him. Hubert couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be dead, along with everyone else, and he couldn’t handle this. He couldn’t keep himself from screaming, even past the point in which his throat burned and felt as though it was tearing, ignoring everything even as Lorenz found him and dragged him away.

**Author's Note:**

> Yaaaaaaaaaay another day of the very sad fic series! I love these two characters so much, and I'm loving playing them now that I'm finally playing through the Black Eagles route. I'm very sorry that I killed Hubert this way, buuuut the prompt demanded it and there's no way I'm killing my ray of sunshine Ferdie. Hopefully you all enjoyed it! Comments always appreciated!


End file.
